Nuclear Legacy - a Hyper- Object. The Marshall Islands and the left overs of a Power Game
Roundtable Recording:
The Weissensee Academy of Art Berlin and the College of the Marshall Islands (CMI) initiate an artistic research on climate change, post-colonial participation and media communication.
The European ideas of areas like the Marshall Islands (in the wider sense Micronesia) still consist of tourist visions of pristine beaches and indigenous cultures. Paul Gauguin’s 19th-century paintings in Polynesia are being increasingly critically commented on, but still they fill the exhibitions and box offices of renowned museums and they spread a questionable, outdated picture ethic.
The fact is that the Pacific Atolls and Islands are living environments that suffer on the one hand from their colonial and postcolonial history (until 1914 they were a German colony) and on the other hand they are severely affected by climate change and the nuclear legacy with its uncontrollable garbage (Bikini Atoll). For artistic practice it is important to blend into each other social interaction (e.g. through media), the connection of useless with necessary materializations, the hyper objects, as well as the exploration of digital capitalism and thus try out social models between utopia and dystopia realistically.
In a first round table these facts will be brought up on the table and questions will be raised about future cultural responsibility.
Participants are:
Meitaka Kendall-Lekka,
Guest-professor at Weißensee Academy of Art Berlin and
Chairperson of the Business Studies Department at the College of Marshall Island in Majuro
Alsen Kelen, Majuro
Nadim Julien Samman,
Curator at KW Institute in Berlin. He accompanied Julien Charriere’s realization at Bikini Atoll and wrote the Travelogue „As We Used to Float“.
http://nadimsamman.com/about
(Julien Charriere, artist from Switzerland, studied at UdK in Berlin with Olaf Eliasson, realized several works with the subject of climate change and also about the nuclear legacy on Bikini and Marshall Islands
http://julian-charriere.net/)
Wolf D. Hartmann,
Scientist and Researcher in Innovation management, former director of the fashion institute of the GDR (1987-89),
Director of several business and information technology schools.
Editor of several publication (among then is one about the Scandal of Bikini)
www.wolf-d-hartmann.de
Hannes Brunner, Initiator and Coordinator of the project MI_CC, www.hannesbrunner.com
Dr. Viviana Uriona, Political Scientist and Filmmaker; Moderation of the Roundtable. Together with Mark Uriona she directed the participatory documentary about the Marshall Islands »One Word«, www.kameradisten.org
Camera: Mark Uriona Filmmaker, and Marié Nobematsu-Le Gassic, Tutor of the project
Technician: Daniel Windisch, Weißensee Academy of Art
Space: Baldon at Lobe Block, Berlin-Gesundbrunnen
Broadcast of the Roundtable, at ALEX in January 2021
Coordination: Hannes Brunner
Link: mi-cc.de/